Most organizations don’t have a communications problem. They have a strategy problem, and those are very different things.
It usually starts small. A tactic gets added because a competitor is doing it, or because someone in leadership asked about it. Then another. Over time, the communications function becomes a collection of inherited habits with no one asking whether any of it is working, or working toward what. By the time results disappoint, the organization is so deep in execution mode that stepping back feels like one more thing to add to an already impossible list.
When results fall flat, the first instinct is to blame the budget. If we only had more resources, more staff, a better platform. But resources don’t fix a foundation that isn’t there.
Tactics aren’t Strategy
Sending emails is a tactic. Posting on Instagram is a tactic. Issuing a statement is a tactic. None of these, however well-executed, constitute a strategy. Strategy is the thinking that happens before any of that, the deliberate decisions about who you’re trying to reach, what you want them to do, and why they should care about what you’re offering over everything else competing for their attention.
When tactics get mistaken for strategy, you end up busy but directionless. The pattern is consistent across sectors: communications teams feel too reactive, don’t have time for strategy, and spend their days running from request to request rather than doing work that moves the needle. As Kivi Leroux Miller of the Nonprofit Marketing Guide has put it, one of the basic definitions of strategy is the ability to say no to most things and yes to a few, to focus on those things and do them well.¹ That’s as true in a corporate marketing department as it is in a mission-driven organization.
The Questions most Organizations Skip
A real communications strategy starts with honest answers to uncomfortable questions:
- Who, specifically, are we trying to reach, and what do we actually know about them?
- What do we want them to think, feel, or do after hearing from us?
- What’s our one core message, and does every channel reinforce it?
- How will we know if it’s working?
These questions don’t require a big budget. They require discipline and clarity.
Companies excelling at personalization generate 40 percent more revenue from those activities than average players, and 76 percent of consumers say personalized communications factor into their consideration of a brand.² Knowing your audience is one thing. Consistently translating that knowledge into every message, across every channel, is where most organizations fall short.
What this Means in Practice
I’ve worked with organizations that had lean budgets and communications that punched far above their weight. The difference was always the same: they knew exactly who they were talking to, they said one thing well, and they measured what mattered.
I’ve also worked with organizations with real resources that struggled because no one had ever stopped to ask whether all that activity was connected to anything. Content production is the easiest part to measure and, as a result, the easiest part to mistake for progress. But volume without narrative focus and intentional distribution rarely moves anyone.
Budget matters at the margins. But strategy is where communications actually lives, and where most organizations have the most room to grow.
¹ Kivi Leroux Miller, Nonprofit Marketing Guide, via Big Duck Smart Communications Podcast (February 2026)
² McKinsey & Company, “The value of getting personalization right or wrong is multiplying”